French plane crash raises concerns over security, pilot screening

Helicopters are being used to retrieve the bodies of 144 passengers and the crew of six from the site of Tuesday's crash near Seyne-les-Alpes, France.

Photo: Laurent Cipriani, STR

WASHINGTON - Flying is safer than ever before, yet in this era of locked cockpit doors and pilot screening, authorities said Thursday that a single aviator was able to deliberately crash an airliner in the French Alps.

The disaster has raised questions about how pilots are evaluated and how airlines can be sure that such an event won't reoccur.

Aviation security experts say what unfolded on Germanwings Flight 9525 could not have happened on a U.S. airliner due to strict security procedures adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Cockpit doors were strengthened, and airlines now lock them at all times, with most doors requiring security codes known only to a handful of people onboard.

Moreover, U.S. pilots cannot be left alone in the cockpit - the fatal error that investigators say doomed the Germanwings flight on Tuesday.

"It's just a common-sense issue," aviation security expert Glenn Winn said. "If you have a two-person cockpit, you don't leave [one of] them alone up there."

Rules quickly revised

In Europe, however, there is no requirement that two crew members be in the cockpit at all times. After the crash, European carriers were moving swiftly to adopt such rules; on Thursday, Norwegian Airlines became the first to announce that its flights would adhere to those guidelines.

While high-profile disasters such as the crash of Flight 9525 and the disappearance last year of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 draw frenzied media coverage, flying has, in reality, never been safer. The era of planes going down due to engine failure, wind shear or midair collision has given way to state-of-the-art technology and vastly improved radar networks. The last plane crash in the United States to kill more than 50 passengers occurred in 2001.

The grim story told by investigators probing this latest crash - a pilot desperately trying to re-enter the cockpit after being locked out by a co-pilot - seems to fit a pattern for recent air disasters: The causes have been unusual, possibly unprecedented, making them hard to predict and tough to prevent.

Because it is still very early in the investigation, many things remain unknown about the crash and the co-pilot. If it is determined that he intentionally brought down the plane, as French officials said Thursday, the crash will be a rarity. Investigations into airline crashes almost never find deliberate pilot action responsible.

Suicide by airliner rare

Flying carries inherent risk, and some of the danger does emanate from the cockpit. Safety advocates and transportation officials usually worry about pilot fatigue and distractions. But pilots almost never intentionally crash their planes, experts say.

"To do that in an airliner is just pretty darn rare," said Robert Benzon, who spent 27 years as a National Transportation Safety Board lead crash investigator. "You could tweak a database on suicide, and you'd get a lot of little planes. But airliners, not much would pop up at all."

If this crash is confirmed as deliberate, Benzon said it would be just the third suicide by airliner in memory, not counting the four planes hijacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. Investigators looking into the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared last year have pointed to pilot action as a likely explanation, but that remains an unconfirmed theory.

The most recent commercial crash blamed on a deliberate action by a pilot occurred in 1999 near Nantucket, Mass. EgyptAir Flight 990, which was leaving Kennedy International Airport in New York en route to Cairo, crashed into the ocean, killing all 217 people on board. The NTSB's investigation said the first officer had guided the plane down; it did not speculate on a motive.